Word: oxygen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Suffocating and sometimes poisonous blooms of algae -- the so-called red and brown tides -- regularly blot the nation's coastal bays and gulfs, leaving behind a trail of dying fish and contaminated mollusks and crustaceans. Patches of water that have been almost totally depleted of oxygen, known as dead zones, are proliferating. As many as 1 million fluke and flounder were killed earlier this summer when they became trapped in anoxic water in New Jersey's Raritan Bay. Another huge dead zone, 300 miles long and ten miles wide, is adrift in the Gulf of Mexico...
...triggered, for example, by extended periods of sunny weather following heavy rains. Scientists believe algal growth is speeded up by the runoff of agricultural fertilizers. The burgeoning algae form a dense layer of vegetation that displaces other plants. As the algae die and decay, they sap enormous amounts of oxygen from the water, asphyxiating fish and other organisms...
...first soil sample briefly breathed new life into the Mars mystique. After being moistened inside the lab, it suddenly released an unexpectedly high burst of oxygen, setting off a flurry of speculation among scientists on earth. Did the oxygen come from some tiny form of Martian life in the soil? After further tests failed to confirm those first results, scientists reluctantly concluded that the large amount of oxygen had probably been produced by a simple chemical reaction between water vapor and some unidentified oxygen-rich compound in the soil sample...
...penetrate the walls of a spacecraft and fatally riddle the body of an astronaut in half an hour, planners envision an onboard shelter into which the crew could repair as soon as a solar-flare warning was sounded. One idea is to build the shelter with the heavy-walled oxygen and water tanks that must be brought along anyway. Soviet scientists are experimenting with generating strong electrically charged fields around the spacecraft. These would have an effect similar to that of the earth's magnetic field, deflecting the speeding particles around the ship...
...outcast, Yuri was forced to take the only job he could find: plumber at a maternity hospital. Not long afterward, he was injured in an oxygen-tank explosion. Since then he has suffered headaches and double vision. Doctors say he may need brain surgery. But, as Vera points out, "it's easier to get a ticket to the moon here than a brain scan." During a hospital stay last month, Yuri contracted hepatitis from a needle. The U.S. embassy has asked Soviet authorities to allow the family to leave so Zieman can get treatment not available in the U.S.S.R...